35,000 words into “Tenth Muse”

…and taking my time. Like I said earlier, it’s so weird to realize that I have to slow down to get somewhere faster. But: I’m seeing that the slower I go with this, the more I see to change, to improve, in what I’ve already done. And hell, “only” 10,000 words in the 18 days since I last posted on this? Compared to your average layabout one-a-year novelist, I’m still on fire!

Dane is in Venice now, just about to meet Jackson-don’t-call-me-Jack. I’ve been reading books, watching Rick Steves videos, combing the interwebz for photos of the hotel Dane is staying in. (I picked the Hotel Giorgione, because it’s really nice and off the beaten path, because Dane doesn’t want to be in the touristy part of Venice, and of course sexy photographer Jackson lives in the “native” part of the city where his family has had a place for, um, I’m thinking five hundred years?)

It feels weird to be writing about a place I’ve never been, and scary – you KNOW you’re going to get something wrong and That Guy is going to write you up on Amazon: “Pretty good novel BUT the view from the Hotel Giorgione does NOT include any satellite dishes on people’s roofs. DO YOUR RESEARCH I GIVE THIS BOOK ONE STAR and I have asked Amazon for a refund. Also 4.99 is too high a price for only ten million words.”

It almost HURTS to slow down my productivity, to stop every paragraph to look something up, to see that it’s time to knock off to go to the day job and realize I didn’t even crack 1,000 words for the day. But, it also feels good to know that reading Mary Buckham’s “Writing Active Settings” books is helping me put a sense of place into my books that I’ve never had – I’ve just been sort of autistic about that kind of thing, so into the internal lives of my characters that I didn’t bother dealing much with their external environments. But fuckity fuck! You can’t send your characters to Venice and Greece without that! To be honest, I know I’m going to have to go back and add more of that – when I get on a roll, telling my story, I’m gonna do what’s natural, which is to skip it. It’s the kind of sauce I have to glaze on later.

AND. I know that if this were a heteromcom, and I got it right, it would be a brazillion copy bestseller. So, since it’s gonna be a gayromcom instead, it’s got to be twice as good to sell one tenth as much. It’s not a heteromcom because I can’t do enough salesmanship for “Brad” books, never mind start from scratch for “Angelina” with a new web page, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, etc. etc. etc. Which is not to say that if Hollywood wanted to heterofy it for a movie, they sure could if the price was right! I think we’re all beyond that stage where a “gay story” has to remain gay because politically it’s wrong to give in to heteronormality. Why not have a “gay novel” with a “straight movie” made out of it? Who cares anymore?

Anyway! I’ll keep you posted on the progress… It’s a real departure for “Brad Vance” because, well, there is NO SEX in it. And it has to be that way, and you’ll see why when it’s done. But I promise you there IS ROMANCE. Oh yeah. Very much so.